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Here are some comments from Rethinking Schools that should clarify to that misguided parent that charter schools, far from offering “long-term benefits to the African-American community,” will wreak long-term devastation on education in the African-American community.

“… Virtually all segments of the charter
school movement have targeted urban areas. Some hope to counteract
inequity, spur innovation and better meet the needs of marginalized
students. Others, taking advantage of the frustration that inevitably
follows when districts are allowed to deteriorate, seek fame and
fortune. … [T]here are those who view charters as a way to get rid of
public schools altogether.

“The elixir of an
individualized bailout from a struggling system has serious side
effects … It can create a painful wedge in many communities,
especially among African-Americans. It can weaken the political will for
a collective solution to the problems in public education; and it can
promote the deterioration of traditional schools. As highly motivated
and engaged families pull their children from traditional public
schools, urban districts have fewer resources – both financial and human
– to address their many problems. The worse the schools get, the more
appealing the escape to charters and private schools, all of which feeds
into the conservative dream of replacing public education with a
free-market system of everyone for themselves, the common good be
damned.”

” … 
the charter school concept, as a movement, has been hijacked by
individuals, groups, and corporations who are guided by free-market
principles, often with a hostility to unions, and who do not necessarily
embrace core values of equity, access, public purpose, and public
ownership.”

Charter schools “too often … prefer, in
practice if not in rhetoric, to educate ‘the deserving poor.’ There is
far less inclination to serve students whose parents are absent or
uninvolved, or who have severe physical or emotional educational needs,
or who have run afoul of the juvenile justice system, or who don’t speak
English as their first language. Perhaps the most glaring example
involves students with special education needs. Such students are
increasingly overrepresented in traditional public schools.”

From the March 2008 book Keeping the Promise? The debate over charter schools, a collection of essays published by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with the Center for Community Change.